Dessert Tray

From left to right: brown butter shortbread, rose jellies, truffle balls, lime meltaways. For the truffles, I used the recipe for my favorite truffle cake, and I just rolled the ganache into balls and tossed them in the candied almonds instead of layering them.

More Cookies!

Yesterday's cookies were so easy and fun to make that I decided to make a few different varieties of shortbread to give to some of the people in my life that I owe a "thank you." I used Martha Stewart's basic shortbread recipe for the orange-cardamom, and I used the cornmeal recipe for the rosemary-apricot cookies, which were inspired by this post. The brown butter ones from Lottie & Doof ended up being my favorite. Yum!

clockwise, from top: rosemary (I served these with apricot preserves),
brown butter-sea salt, lemon-cornmeal, and cardamom-orange

Lemon-Cornmeal Shortbread Cookies

This recipe was on Poppytalk a while back, and I found it while searching through my Reader for Lottie & Doof's brown butter shortbread cookies, which I've had on my "to make" list for some time. Because we've been having such lovely summerlike weather, I decided to save the brown butter cookies for a cozier day, and make these sunny yellow cookies today, using the Meyer lemons from my newly planted tree. The wonderful thing about shortbread is that it is pretty much foolproof. In the simplest versions, all you need are butter, flour, and sugar. Since the basic recipe is so easy, the cookies can be dressed up in a million ways. My friend Christine makes amazing salt and pepper shortbread with fleur de sel, and it's easy to dress up your shortbread with cardamom, toasted coconut, rosemary (I've made rosemary pine nut ones as well- they go wonderfully with blood orange sorbet!), green tea, chamomile... you name it! Anyways, I've modified the recipe slightly, and I think they came out really well. They are lemony and buttery with just a little crunch from the cornmeal. This recipe makes about 32 cookies.

1 1/3 C flour
1/2 C yellow cornmeal
4 T cornstarch or tapioca flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 C unsalted butter, softened
2/3 c confectioner's sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
Grated lemon zest from 3 small lemons or two medium ones
Demerara sugar for sprinkling (I used Turbinado- any coarse sugar will do)

Preheat oven to 350F. Cream the butter and sugar. Add in the vanilla and lemon zest and mix. In another bowl, combine the flour, cornmeal, cornstarch and salt and whisk together. Slowly add in the dry ingredients into the butter/sugar mixture and stir until just combined.

Prepare your baking sheet with parchment paper or silpat, and using your hands, pinch off about a tablespoon of dough and roll into a ball. Press each ball with your thumb and repeat, spacing each cookie about 1 inch apart. Sprinkle with demerara sugar and bake for 10-12 minutes or until the undersides of the cookie are slightly golden. Cool on wire racks.

Hamentaschen

These jelly-filled cookies are traditionally made for the Jewish holiday Purim, and the shape is meant to represent the three-cornered hat that the biblical villain Hamen wore when he tried to have Queen Esther (and all the Jews) killed. In some countries, people also eat Hamen's ears! This recipe is from Joan Nathan's "Jewish Cooking in America." Over the years, my mother and I have discovered that certain jams work better than others: fruits like blueberries, that have less natural pectin tend to get runny and ooze out of the cookies while they bake. For this same reason, store-bought jam is preferable to homemade, unless you have some very firm homemade jam on hand. Our favorite (for its flavor and consistency) has always been apricot.


2/3 C butter
1/2 C sugar
1 large egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
3 C unbleached flour
1 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
Jellies or jams of your choice

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the egg and vanilla and process till smooth. Add the dry ingredients and process until a ball is formed. Chill the dough for 2-3 hours, or overnight.

Taking 1/4 of the dough at a time, roll out on a lightly floured board to about 1/8 inch thick. Cut into 2 1/2 inch circles. Drop one teaspoon of jam in the center of each circle, and then bring the dough up around it, pressing the three corners down well. Bake at 375 degrees on a well-greased cookie sheet for 10-15 minutes, or until the tops are golden. Makes 36 cookies.

Gingersnaps

I have been making this recipe since I was about 13 years old. It comes from Maida Heatter's "Book of Great Cookies." The cookies are not super soft, but they are not the hard type either; Maida calls them "semi-soft." My mother and I like to add some fresh ginger, as well as come chopped crystallized ginger for an extra gingery cookie! The cookies in the photo were rolled in black sugar for Halloween.


2 1/4 C flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp fresh ginger
1 tsp powdered ginger
1/2 tsp powdered cloves
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp finely ground black pepper
6 oz butter
1 C dark brown sugar, firmly packed
1 egg
1/4 C molasses
1/2 C finely chopped crystallized ginger
Granulated sugar (to roll the cookies in)

Sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, and spices. In an electric mixer, cream the butter. Add the brown sugar and fresh ginger and beat well. Add the egg and the molasses, and beat until the mixture is light in color. On low speed, gradually add the dry ingredients, scraping the bowl as you go. Fold in the crystallized ginger. Refrigerate the dough until you can handle it (as little as 15 minutes).

Pour some granulated sugar into a shallow bowl. Use a rounded tablespoon of dough for each cookie. Roll it into a ball between your hands, and then roll around in the sugar to coat. Place the balls 2 inches apart on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake the cookies for about 13 minutes at 375 degrees, until they feel semi-firm to the touch. The tops should just be cracked. Transfer to racks to cool. Makes approximately 36 cookies.